Saturday, May 1st, 2010
3:00 pm
Barnes & Noble Booksellers (2nd floor) at 210 Americana Way,
The Americana at Brand in Glendale, CA
Rebecca Skloot
“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”
Come hear the incredible story of the most medically influential person to have ever lived – and still lives on, immortally, through her cells! Rebecca Skloot has chronicled the unsung life of the little known (unwitting) donor of the HeLa cell line, Henrietta Lacks, that was used to produce the cure for polio and has been invaluable in medical research to this day, despite her death almost sixty years ago!
THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS marks the debut of an outsize new talent in narrative nonfiction. Rebecca Skloot brilliantly weaves together the Lackses’ story?past and present?with the story of the first culturing of HeLa cells, the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, and the birth of bioethics. She combines investigative reporting, crystalline science writing, and riveting narrative. The result is a book that leaves as indelible an impression as Henrietta’s cells.
REBECCA SKLOOT is an award-winning science writer whose articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine; O, The Oprah Magazine; Discover; Columbia Journalism Review; and elsewhere. She is a contributing editor for Popular Science magazine and has also been a correspondent for NPR and PBS. A former vice president of the National Book Critics Circle, she is on the faculty at the University of Memphis, where she teaches creative nonfiction, and she blogs at Culture Dish, hosted by Seed Magazine’s science blogs. Skloot has an undergraduate degree in biomedical science from Colorado State University and an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Pittsburgh. She lives in Memphis, Tennessee.
Science Cafes are informal meetings which usually include a short presentation on a particular scientific theme. In addition to our members, we invite the public at large to come participate in open discussions. A central goal of these gatherings is to bring scientists and nonscientists together to listen to one another, so as to get a better sense of how we each see the scientific issues that affect all of our lives. There is a book signing to follow. See you there!